Posts Tagged ‘Hawaii’

A quick post this week with two songs from the Bonsai Garden Orchestra. Their album, Take One, is “a friendly encounter between Hawaii and Austria, initiated by Wolfgang Temmel, an artist who crosses frontiers. A lively meeting of vocal and string acrobatics, of sound worlds and sound cultures, nine musicians play – in the best sense of the world – across the bounds of a world (music) orchestra.” Wolfgang Temmel loves ukulele and decided to make a group around it, mixing the falsetto vocals of Hawaii with Alpine yodelling in some songs.

The yodels of two songs are performed by Klaus Trabitsch and Franz Schmuck. He’s an artist who learned jazz percussion and who is interested in the music instruments of the world, from Bali to Africa. Klaus Trabitsch is a guitarist and singer who has been involved in many world music projects. ‘Ahulili is an Hawaiian classic composed by Scott Ha’i and is about a mountain peak in Maui. Pauoa Liko Ka Lehua is also an Hawaiian classic composed by Emma Bush.

In the beginning of the 20th century, the influence of Hawaiian music (songs and steel guitar) was far reaching: every part of the globe had his Hawaiian groups performing the romantic island songs. As seen in many cases, it is with a world fair that the craze spread: the Panama-Pacific Exposition held in San Francisco in 1915 presented songs and dances, ukulele and steel guitar at the Hawaiian pavilion. But it was not only in the USA that you could hear these island sounds…

Kostas Bezos (1905-1943) was born in a village near Corinth in Greece and was a guitarist who not only played rebetika songs, the typical Greek style of the era, but also steel guitar in Hawaiian style. He recorded songs between the 1930’s and the 1940’s for Columbia and His Master’s Voice. The rebetika songs were released under the pseudonym of A. Kostis or K. Kostis. Apparently he recorded more Hawaiian songs but it is easier to find his Greek songs on cd. Maybe some record collectors have 78rpm recordings.

Pame sti Honoloulou was recorded in Athens, Greece, in the early 30s by Bezo’s Hawaiian Guitar Ensemble. The song, a comic / romantic one, is about the lure of the islands and translate as Let’s go to Honolulu. Bezos sings, and yodels !

Another song is Ta Aspra Poulia Sta Vouna (The White Birds in the Mountains), recorded in Athens in 1936, no yodel here but a funny intro, animal sounds and surf like guitar. I’ve read that another name of the group could be Aspra Poulia (White Birds) Hawaiian Orchestra but maybe it’s just the title of the song.

As an example of his rebetika style, here are two more songs: Toubeliki – toubeliki and Troumba, recorded in the early 1930s in New York, from this collection.